Meaning of Ghost Dance | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A 19th-century religious movement, incorporated into numerous Native American belief systems, according to which performing a dance would reunite the living with spirits of the dead and bring prosperity and unity to native peoples.
2. Alternative letter-case form of ghost dance.
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3. One of the dances of the Ghost Dance religion.

Equivalents

Examples

“It would be difficult to designate the Ghost Dance⟳ of the Indians of North America, for instance, as anything but a phenomenon of acculturation; […].”

“In the fall⟳ of 1890, a new religious fever, “Ghost Dancing,” spread⟳ among the Indian tribes pushed to the far edge of the prairies by broken treaties and the advance of the white man. Their religion held that floods would come⟳, destroying, the whites. And then, game would return⟳; dead Indians would be resurrected, and living Indians would be protected from all harm⟳ by wearing painted ghost shirts and performing the special dance⟳.”

“In life, many of the Army’s victims were the followers of the Ghost Dance⟳, a nineteenth-century faith that originated with a vision, delivered, it was said, by God to the Paiute messiah Jack Wilson, more commonly known as Wovoka.”

CEFR level